For more than 80 years Budd Stores has been an intregal part of Downtown Guelph. We have always made our best efforts to project a positive image in our downtown while maintaining a viable business, so that our staff would have secure employment and the people of Guelph would enjoy visiting our downtown and our store.
We, along with many other businesses are presently experiencing a very difficult economic environment that is making our ability to stay viable a real challenge. It won’t take much to push many good and well established operations past the point of no return.
When Guelph Council saw the benefits of implimenting two hour free parking in the downtown we began to experience a slow and steady improvement in our business as did many of our neighbours. We also noticed more positive comments from our customers about the downtown. This has been a common experience for other communities in South Western Ontario
who have instituted a similar policy for their downtowns.We have a beautiful but fragile downtown with great potential for
rejuvination. Most of us feel a reversal of the two hour free parking would be short sighted and costly to the city,and negatively offset the positive impact it has had, while sending the wrong message to our community and potential investors.Those of us, who for generations, have worked very hard in many ways to make the citizens of Guelph so proud of “The Heart and Soul” of Guelph, will again be put at a competative dissadvantage and be unable to conduct business on a level playing field.
We sincerely hope that you will consider the long term future of our downtown and continue the two hour free parking in our downtown which will have a positive economic impact for all the people of Guelph. HB